Blazing Saddles

I grew up watching the "Friday Western" each week on the television so am a bit steeped in the genre to which this takes an entertaining, and loving, swipe. "Hedley Lamarr" (Harvey Korman) is out to trash his own town so he can buy up the land cheaply for his railroad. What better way to drive folks away than to appoint an African-American sheriff? The shrewd "Bart" (Cleavon Little) knows full well that he has precisely no support from his community - not the sharpest tools in the box - so he signs up the mean "Waco Kid" (Gene Wilder) as his deputy. A gunslinger of ill-repute, he and his boss gradually convince the sheepish townsfolk that they can fight back against the scheming "Lamarr" and maybe even foil his not so cunning plan. My personal favourite scene has to be the wonderful imitation of Marlene Dietrich by Madeline Kahn singing "I'm Tired", but there are loads of other skits of everything from "High Noon" to "Chisum" with Slim Pickens and David Huddleston providing some genuine western credentials to the proceedings. Auteur Mel Brooks pops up once or twice, in differing guises, to add a bit of additional comedy to his already quite daft storyline that is respectful of cowboy movies but also quite potently critical of their stereotyping characters, their repetitive storylines and usually, their entirely predictable conclusions. This mixes all of that up with Little and Wilder gelling well, presenting us with a genuinely laugh out loud, occasionally slap-stick, critique of one hundred years of a theme of cinema that has probably not really evolved that much since 1874!

<em>'Blazing Saddles'</em> is fairly funny. The good intentions of this 1974 satire is clear to see, naturally it can come across as a bit on the nose at times but it does lead to some amusement. Cleavon Little & Gene Wilder give good performances; always nice to see the latter. Harvey Korman is the one I probably found most amusing, for example the Hedy Lamarr running gag gave me a minor chuckle each time. In fact, that scene with him and Robert Ridgely (credit to him, also) is probably the one I'll remember most from this; that and the quicksand part. Both of those aforementioned bits are at the beginning. It's certainly a film that I'd say starts stronger than it finishes. I don't mean that in a negative way, but if the run time was longer then it'll would've become an issue. The conclusion itself is bizarre, kinda a lacklustre end in truth. Just like with when I watched <em>'Robin Hood: Men in Tights'</em> earlier this month, I can see the general appeal for this Mel Brooks flick. I enjoyed both movies, with this one a notch above that one in my opinion. The two are equally worth watching, all the same.